


Mama

by Margo_Kim



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Holocaust, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, POV Female Character, POV Minor Character, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-31 14:10:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cleaned up fill for the <a href="http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/"><b>1stclass_kink</b></a> prompt <a href="http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/3115.html?thread=3542315#t3542315">Edie Lensherr is Amazing</a>. Edie Lensherr's last days at Auschwitz, and her thoughts of her son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mama

  
The rules of motherhood are this:

To save a child from a fire. This is heroic. To save your own child from a fire. This is nothing.

This is what you do because that is who you are. You are a mother, and that means so many things. You made this boy with bits of yourself. You nurtured him, you carried him, you birthed him, pushing life into him with your sweat and blood. He is yours, in a way that nothing else on this black earth is anymore.

And they have taken him from you.

Who would have thought that mere men could keep you from him? Who could have thought that fences and guns and hatred were stronger than your love for him? You couldn’t. You couldn’t conceive it, and now he is on one side of the fence and you are on the other.

They take your name as well, replace it with a number. They take your clothes, replace them with rags. They take your hair, your health, your home. Your monthlies stop. The women in your bunk whisper that they are sterilizing you, medicine slipped into what food you get. You’re grateful, in a way. Your body couldn’t hold a baby now, not when you can count each rib and each notch in your spine. The guards, they take the healthy women, the ones who work in the offices with their round hips and their gentle curves. They will not look at you like that, and you are grateful, honestly, for the small miracles you get.

They already taken so much from you. At this point, you just want to die with some dignity intact. You want to die with your son’s name on your lips.

The girls tell you not to think about him. The women understand. Late at night when you should be sleeping because you all need to rest so badly, you talk about your children instead. “Ilsa told me she saw Max working in the offices.” “My Ellen is being transferred. I don’t know where. How am I supposed to survive, without ever knowing how she is?” “Our Magda is gone. They killed her.”

And when they look at you, you have nothing. “I do not know where my son is. I do not know what is happening to him.”

Then you move on to the next tragedy. You start to love these women, fierce and brave and with no reason to be either. It is such a shame, you think, that they too will die soon. You do not share your bread with the hungry. They do not share with you. Soon the guards will come and take you one by one to see the face of your Creator. Such is the nature of Auschwitz.  
And yet you think, Erik. They have taken all this from you, but they cannot take him.

Just like the sunrise, they come, unstoppable and inevitable, for you. As they drag you away, you do not even hate them. You are beyond that. Already, you are dead. You see it in the sheen of the guns, hear it in the pound of their boots, feel it in the sweat of their palms. You have always been good at knowing what comes next. It is your gift, and while it could not lead you out of here, it will not lead you astray now.

And just when you are ready, drawing your last breath and savoring the taste of the air, the door bursts open and Erik is on the other side.

Where is your courage now? Where is your valor? There is no dignity left in you at the sight of your baby. Are there tears on your face? You do not know, you cannot fathom. Here is your son, and he is staring at you. For a moment, there are no fences, no guns, no guards with their iron-grip. You stare at each other, and that is the world.

“Move the coin,” a monster with a gun says. A gun, a gun he points at your child. No, you want to scream, but then the gun comes around to point at you. Yes, you think, yes, this is how it must be.

“One,” the man says.

There is a coin on the table, there is pain on your son’s face. You know how this will end.

“Two.”

“It’s alright,” you say. But it’s not. You can see on his face that this is not, that this will engrave a pain into him more deeply than any knife of the SS. Your death will twist your son irrevocably, and his pain will never stop. And you, crushed into finer dust than you imagined possible by the machine of this hell, you can only lie.

There’s not enough time. Not enough time to tell him all the things you love about him. Not enough time to see the man he will be. Already, you can see that mysterious stranger lurking at the corners on his narrowing face. The baby fat is gone, and what’s left behind is hard and sharp. Don’t be bitter, my son. Don’t become the men who twisted you so. This and more you think of saying. This and more you cannot coax out of your mouth.

If you could, if any of this could be taken back, the guard’s grip loosened, the monster’s gun lowered, your baby’s face eased, what would you say? No question. You would scoop him up into your too spindly arms and whisper, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” until he believed. Then you would release him and let the monster fire.

But you cannot save him. Not from the bullet and not from the blood. And thus, unquestionably, you are the worthless piece of trash they called you when they threw you in here.

No. You stand up straighter. No. This, they will not take from you. This, they cannot touch. You are his mother. He is your son. This is too perfect for these bastards to understand and so they can never hurt it. They can, they will, rip apart the flesh for answers and never solve the heart. "Erik--"

“Three.”

You die like a mother should. You die with love on your lips.


End file.
